Darkness Creeps
by LAXgirl
Summary: Satin searched the battlefield for Jon's body. Whatever Jon's crimes might have been he still deserved a proper burial. If only Jon had remained dead. -Set immediately after Jon's last chapter in "Dance with Dragons"-


Warning: This story takes place immediately after Jon's last chapter in "Dance with Dragons." So, spoiler warning. Also character death.

**Darkness Creeps**

Night had crept over Castle Black as silently as wildling raiders. It was almost queer how quiet and peaceful it was now after all the fighting that had finally stopped only a few hours ago. Satin looked around the human carnage that littered the castle's main courtyard. The smell of blood still hung heavy in the air despite the cold. It mingled with the stench of fire which brothers of the Night's Watch had only recently been able to put the last ones out. Satin felt almost numb as he took in the scene. Even now, everything that had happened still didn't feel real.

A waxing moon hung above him in the sky like a white globe, its ethereal light illuminating the devastation that stretched out all around the young steward. Bodies - wildlings, brothers of the Night's Watch and Queensmen - littered the courtyard in bloody tangles of flesh and armor. Satin was sure he spotted the dismembered arm of a wildling laying next to the disemboweled body of one of Queen Selyse's guardsmen. He could tell by the sleeve of fur and boiled leather still encasing it like the wrappings of a sausage.

In death, it seemed, the Stranger made no distinction between sides and took men of all affiliations indiscriminately. Frozen blood coated the ground in a crusty layer that shined almost black in the moonlight. Far to his right Satin saw the hulking remains of Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun laying in a mountainous heap at the base of one of the towers where it had taken half a dozen Queensmen, brothers and wildlings to finally stop the rampaging giant after the fighting had broken out.

Satin looked around him in stunned silence. How had it come to this? One moment Wun Wun was bashing the brains in of one of Queen Selyse's men, and the next half a dozen brothers of the Night's Watch were descending on Jon Snow with naked steel. Satin remembered little of what happened next. He vaguely remembered trying to go to the Lord Commander's aide despite the circle of brothers surrounding him, their arms drawing long red arcs up and down through the air over Jon. He thought he'd seen Bowen Marsh weeping as his dagger descended again and again into Jon's helpless form, but in the confusion that erupted immediately after Jon crumbled to his knees and then face-first onto the ground Satin could never be sure.

In the blink of an eye, Castle Black had become a battlefield. Brothers of the Night's Watch, wildlings and Queensmen threw themselves at each other - no one knowing who really to fight but all of them aware that it was now a fight for survival. Armed with nothing more than a knife he used to cut meat with at meals, Satin had been forced to break off his attempt to go to Jon and seek shelter away from the fighting. He had never been much of a fighter. The only weapon he really had any proficiency with was a bow and arrow, and there hadn't been any bows within reach when the fighting had broken out. In the confusion immediately following Jon's murder, no one could say who was friend or foe anymore. In the chaos, with no one to take command or lead them, other brothers of the Night's Watch were suddenly potential enemies.

It was only later - after the sounds of battle had dwindled away and the only sounds to replace it were the moans of dying men and the crackling of fire - that Satin had dared emerge from his hiding place behind the forge of Donal Noye's smithy. When he'd emerged, he found the world he'd known that morning forever changed. Dead bodies covered the yards of the castle as thick as rushes. Almost all of Jon's wildling refuges had fled. Queen Selyse's men had disappeared - mostly likely falling back to protect the queen and princess and spirit them away back to the relative safety of Eastwatch before any wildlings or enemy brothers of the Night's Watch decided to come after them as hostages. Satin neither knew nor cared what the queen decided to do now, now that the hospitality Jon had welcomed her with was no longer at her disposal.

With Jon removed as Lord Commander, the Night's Watch had fallen into disarray. Many of the higher ranking officers and seasoned brothers, including Othell Yarweck, Ulmer of the Kingswood and Goady Big Liddle - had been killed in the melee. Bowen Marsh and Black Bulwer had survived and tried to restore order to Castle Black, but to no avail. The Night's Watch was in shambles. Four out of every five brothers who'd survived the fight were those who'd been pressed into joining the Watch because of rape, thievery, murder or general lawlessness. No one, not even Black Bulwer, could bring order back to the men. Those brothers who had not wandered off after the fleeing wildlings and Queensmen in search of more blood had fallen back to different parts of the castle to seek refuge from the fighting much like Satin had. Once the fighting had begun to taper off, more and more remaining brothers had emerged to take stock of their new world. Bowen Marsh had ordered what few men remained to go out through the castle grounds to search for survivors. Immediately after the chaos had begun to subside someone, it seemed, had had the foresight to seek out Queen Selyse's maester and press him into healing those that still had a chance of benefiting from his healing.

Satin had been amongst the group of men Bowen Marsh had sent out to search for survivors. Other crows moved through the twisted field of dead or dying men around Satin. The moans and screams of injured wildings, brothers and Queensmen echoed against the walls of Castle Black. Those sounds barely registered in Satin's mind. The cries of the dying were nothing more than the buzzing of flies to him as he searched the blood-crusted courtyard for a single person amongst hundreds.

He had to find Jon Snow. Jon might have endangered the neutrality of the Night's Watch by aiding Stannis's campaign. He might have let wildlings cross over to their side of the Wall after the Night's Watch had spent centuries fighting to prevent such a thing from ever happening. He might have been planning to use his power as Lord Commander to fight Bolton and rescue his sister and Winterfell. According to the oath Jon had swore when he pledged his life to the Night's Watch, he deserved to die for his treason. Despite all that, it still did not change the fact that Satin considered Jon Snow a friend before anything else.

He still remembered fighting beside Jon on the Wall against Mance Rayder's wildlings what felt like a lifetime and a half ago. He still remembered training beside Jon in the yards, and making straw brothers to stand sentinel on the Wall with them. Nothing Jon had done during his time as Lord Commander could ever make Satin forget that it had been Jon who'd been one of the first to befriend him and treat him as a real person and not look down on him as some whore from Oldtown. Jon had made him his steward and given him a sense of belonging. Jon had been his friend, commander and the closest thing he'd ever had to a real brother.

But now Jon was gone. Dead. Killed. Slain by the very ones who'd voted for him to be their leader. Satin didn't know what other brothers of the Watch planned to do with Jon once his body was found amongst the other corpses, but Satin doubted Bowen Marsh planned to treat the body of a traitor with any kind of respect or honor. He had to find Jon before anyone else. He did not want to see Jon's head mounted on a spike on top the Wall. Despite whatever Jon might have done he deserved a proper burial. In these times of encroaching darkness and walking dead, a small pyre to send Jon on into the afterlife would be enough to ease Satin's sense of honor and duty.

The courtyard of the castle lay so thick with bodies it was difficult for Satin to find anywhere to place his feet without stepping on somebody. Satin carried no torch, but with the moon as bright as it was he did not need one. Despite the help of the moon it was still difficult to tell the bodies of brothers of the Watch from wildlings. In the moonlight black was almost indistinguishable from the dark browns and grays wildlings tended to favor. The bodies of Queensmen luckily stood out from the rest. Their polished armor shined like pools of hardened mercury in the moonlight.

Mincing his way through the bodies, Satin made his way towards Hardin's Tower where he'd last seen Jon trying to calm Wun Wun right before Bowen Marsh, Wick Wittlestick and several other brothers had fallen on him with daggers. The piles of bodies were deepest here in this section of the castle. Several other brothers moved amongst the bodies with torches, searching for any signs of life amongst the dead. Satin recognized Leathers and Emrick, but did not greet them or show them any sign of recognition. The events of the day and the grimness of his task weighted too heavily on Satin and stole any sense of camaraderie he might have felt for his fellow brothers at the moment. If anything, Satin felt numb - like the winds of winter had reached down into the very core of his being and frozen his heart into a solid brick of flesh. He could feel nothing except a dull ache in the bottom of his stomach that throbbed like a three-day-old bruise. It hurt like betrayal, sorrow, loneliness and loss, but Satin still felt too numb to try and actually name it.

_Where are you, Jon Snow?_ Satin silently called into the night. He did not want to fail Jon in this last pitiful show of friendship. He could no longer protect Jon from daggers or knives, but he could at least see to it that no more harm came to Jon's body.

Satin didn't know how long he searched the black-robed bodies of the dead. It could have been seconds, minutes or hours. But it was as he was gingerly lifting the head of a fallen brother off the ground to check his face Satin saw a white figure stagger past the corner of his eye. Startled, Satin whirled towards it. The dead man's head he'd been holding - a big man named Tim Stone - slipped between his fingers and hit the ground with a dull, meaty slap.

"Ghost?" Satin squeaked.

There, several paces away, stood Jon's albino direwolf. The wolf's shaggy fur gleamed a brilliant white in the moonlight.

"You're still alive…" Satin was shocked to see the direwolf. After Jon's murder he'd half-expected the brothers who'd killed Jon to immediately go after his direwolf next. It seemed the wolf had somehow managed to evade his master's killers in the confusion. He must have somehow broken out of Jon's room behind Noye's forge. Satin had never felt threatened by Jon's giant direwolf and had actually become used to seeing the beast trotting at his master's heels whenever Jon went around the castle in his duties. Satin liked to think that his fondness was at least partially reciprocated by the direwolf. Ghost had never snapped or bared his teeth at him, and on several occasions had even let Satin come close enough to him to run a hand down the length of his back.

"You cannot stay here, Ghost," Satin said, carefully mincing his way through the bodies towards the direwolf. "Jon's dead. There's nothing left for you here." He didn't know if Ghost actually understood him or not, but he had to get the wolf away before any of the other brothers noticed him. They'd surely kill him if they knew their ex-commander's direwolf still lived. Satin might not be able to do anything more for Jon except see to it that his body safely found its way to a funeral pyre, but he could still make sure that Jon's wolf did not follow him into the afterlife.

"Ghost, come," Satin urgently called under his breath. "You cannot stay here. If anyone sees you-"

Ghost slowly turned his great head towards Satin and stared at him with large molten eyes.

Satin abruptly stopped, his blood turning to ice water in his veins. The eyes that Ghost stared at him with were no longer the shade of spilt blood Satin remembered. Instead, they were now empty sockets of blackness backlit by chips of ice-blue fire. It was only now that Satin noticed the numerous red slashes marring Ghost's white coat in the moonlight, and the frozen lengths of sinew and muscle hanging from the ragged remains of the direwolf's throat. Ghost's mouth hung open, his long purple tongue lolling over his teeth, but no cloud of breath appeared to fog the frigid night air around his muzzle.

Satin could not find the strength to make his muscles move or even breath. He felt riveted in place under Ghost's blue gaze. The wind whistled biting and cold off the seven hundred foot wall of ice behind him. He did not know how long Ghost stared at him, but finally the direwolf broke his gaze and turned away from Satin as though no longer interested in the young steward. Satin felt as though he'd just been released by some invisible grip. He drew in a shaky breath of air as he watched the dead direwolf stride away over the carpet of bodies towards the far corner of the courtyard. Satin stared after him, still trying to make himself believe what he was seeing. Underneath his furs and cloak, Satin began to shake - and not completely from the cold.

Ghost moved slowly, as if he were wounded and not completely in control of his limbs. The blood had frozen into a reddish black crust along his flanks where countless knives had pierced him before finally bringing the great wolf down. The direwolf suddenly stopped next to a thick knot of bodies and craned his head closer to it. Satin could hear him snuffling along the bodies even from a distance. Suddenly, Ghost stilled as though sensing something. He plunged his head into the tangle of bodies. From where he stood on the other side of the courtyard Satin couldn't see what had caught the direwolf's attention. But as Satin stared in horror something suddenly twitched inside the pile of bodies Ghost pawed and sniffed at. The pile of corpses shifted - the top few bodies sliding down the rest onto more bodies farther below. A figure appeared between the tangle of limbs and torso. It stumbled as it tried to free its feet from the other bodies. Ghost moved forward and allowed the figure to steady itself against his flank. The figure finally wrenched itself completely free from the press and stood straight, the moonlight washing over its features.

Satin gasped and took an involuntary step backwards. The figure Ghost had freed was none other than Jon Snow. But not the Jon Snow Satin had set out to find.

This Jon looked exactly like the one Satin remembered fighting beside on the Wall and training beside in the yard. His strong features and dark hair were same, but everything else Satin remembered about Jon had changed. This Jon's skin was too white for any living being to have. Hoarfrost stiffened Jon's hair and coated his clothes in a fine web of ice veins. The jagged holes where Wick and Bowen's knives had punched through Jon's cloak and tunic were crusted with frozen blood. Although he could not see Jon's hands because of his gloves, Satin was sure that underneath those layers of fur-lined leather, the young commander's hands were now a rotten shade of black. The frost covered man slowly turned towards Satin and stared at him wight-blue eyes.

Satin and Jon stared at each other across the courtyard for a stunned, breathless moment of silence that seemed to stretch out into eternity. The wind blowing off the Wall seemed to cut right through Satin like a knife through silk as his stared into his friend's lifeless eyes. He felt like Jon's gaze was reaching down into him, chilling his very soul.

Finally, Jon looked away from Satin, breaking the intense stare. Keeping one hand on Ghost's flank to steady himself, the former commander of the Night's Watch reached back into the pile of bodies he'd just extricated himself from and pulled Longclaw from its depths. The edge of the bastard blade flashed in the moonlight as Jon held it up in his hand. At Jon's feet several of the other bodies that had once buried him began to stir.

It was at that moment a startled cry of alarm echoed through the courtyard, but not from Satin. Several dozen paces away to Satin's right, one of the other brothers who'd been helping search the courtyard for survivors had finally looked up and noticed Jon and Ghost's reanimated corpses. The cry was quickly taken up by several more brother's walking the battlements high above them on the Wall, and along the merlons of the surrounding towers.

"To arms! To arms! Wights in the castle!" a voice shouted. Somewhere a horn began to sound. Once. Twice. Three times.

That was all it took to bring the shambled remains of the Night's Watch pouring out of doors and onto the battlements. Several dozen men appeared behind Satin along the edges of the courtyard. By then the dead bodies around Jon had finished staggering to their feet. Other corpses around the courtyard were beginning to stir as well.

Satin could not move, nor make himself even begin to contemplate what he was seeing as more and more dead men - brothers, wildlings, and Queensmen alike - twitched back to life and pushed themselves back onto their feet. Within moments, the living remnants of the Night's Watch were outnumbered four to one by the dead.

"Wights!" a voice bellowed from somewhere above Satin. He looked up and spotted Black Bulwer standing between two of the merlons crowning the top of Hardin's Tower. Even from a distance Satin could see the whites of the First Ranger's eyes as he surveyed the wight-infested courtyard. "Fire!" he cried, frantically looking over his shoulder towards someone Satin could not see. "Arrows with fire! Quickly!" The sound of sharpened steel sliding from scabbards filled the courtyard all around Satin.

One of the wights close to Satin - a wildling - seemed to hear the First Ranger's command and clumsily bent down to retrieve a sword from the ground near his feet with his one remaining arm. His other Satin vaguely remembered seeing earlier laying next to a disemboweled Queensmen. The wight raised the sword high into the air and staggered towards the line of Night's Watch circling the yard. The sound of scrapping steel filled the courtyard as more brothers drew their weapons. The wildling wight opened its mouth as though to issue a battle cry, but the only sound to come out was a hideous gurgling sound - like cold wind being sucked across the opening of a wet tube.

"Fire!" Bulwer shouted from the battlements.

"Stop," said another voice.

The voice was spoken softly but it still carried through the courtyard as loudly as the splintering crack of a trebuchet. The wildling wight immediately broke off his attack and turned towards the speaker. Everyone else, both living and dead, did the same. It took Satin a startled moment to realize it had been the reanimated corpse of Jon Snow who had spoken.

The former commander of the Night's Watch stood in the middle of the yard, Ghost a silent sentinel by his side. No one spoke or dared move as his ice-blue eyes swung around the perimeter of the courtyard as though taking tally of everyone there. Satin felt frozen under Jon's gaze as it swept towards him and lingered there for half a second before moving on. His inspection finished, Jon looked up towards Bulwer on the battlement.

"No more fighting," Jon rasped. Although he did not raise his voice Satin could hear him clearly even from halfway across the courtyard. The sound that came from his once-friend's mouth reminded Satin of the whistle of the wind through the branches of dead trees in winter. Jon swept ice-flecked eyes around the courtyard again. "No more fighting," he rasped again. No one spoke to contradict him. Even dead and technically no longer their Commander, Jon's voice still held authority and seemed to inspire men to listen.

Jon stepped forward. Hoarfrost crunched as he moved, his clothes stiff with ice. The army of wights seemed to shrink back from him as if he were an Other himself. His command over them was inexplicable but undeniably clear. "These are not our enemies," his cold voice echoed through the courtyard. "Your former lives might be nothing more than fleeting memories to you now, but you will not fall sway to the Others' power just yet. You _will_ fulfill your final promise to me. No matter what affiliations you held before, you will follow me now."

Jon swept inhuman blue eyes as hard and unyielding as glacial ice around the courtyard of wights. The walking dead - brothers, wildlings and Queensmen alike - all bowed their heads to Jon in supplication.

"We march," Jon said, pointing with Longclaw towards the front gate of Castle Black. The army of dead men all moved to obey. Walking in slow, shambling steps the wights began to drift out of the blood crusted yard, through the splintered remains of the caste gate and out into the night.

Living brothers of the Nights Watch looked on from the edges of the courtyard and battlements in stunned silence. Even Black Bulwer seemed at a loss for what to do or say. No one moved to stop the wights or attack them. Within minutes Jon Snow and Ghost were the last living dead in the castle. Holding Longclaw loose by his side Jon started after his army in the same shuffling walk all wights shared. Just as in life, Ghost followed close at Jon's heels.

Satin stood frozen in place as the former Commander staggered across the now empty courtyard. Just as Jon was about to pass him he finally managed to rattle himself back to the present. "Where are you going?" he called in a false voice of bravery. His voice echoed against the walls of the surrounding towers so that it seemed as if several of him were speaking at once from several different places.

Jon paused in his trek and regarded Satin with unnerving eyes of blue pit-fire. "South. To Winterfell," he rasped. "I must still save Arya and Stannis, if he still lives. The Bastard of Bolton must be stopped."

Satin stared at Jon, his mind a whirlwind of confused and conflicting thoughts. "But… the Night's Watch. The Others…"

Jon's lifeless expression did not change but Satin felt something in Jon's aura soften. "My time with the Night's Watch is over," Jon whispered. His voice was tinged with the smallest hint of sadness. "I broke my oath to the Watch when I swore to march on Winterfell and paid the traitor's price for it. I am no longer bound by the oaths of living men."

"But who will lead us?" Satin demanded. He hated how childish he sounded, but he already felt as if everything in his world was falling apart, and somehow Jon leaving to march for his childhood home made the loneliness Satin felt even worse than when he'd thought Jon was dead. "What is the Night's Watch suppose to do now with you gone?"

The barest flicker of sadness showed on Jon's face. "That is for you to decide. I am no longer your Lord Commander. But whatever you and the Watch decide to do, you must decide it quickly. The Others are closer than any of us originally thought, else I would not be speaking to you now. I would fight to help hold the Wall, but I cannot. The punishment for my crimes against the Watch has made me powerless to stand against them. If I linger here any longer I fear I won't be able to fight their blood-call anymore. The darkness is creeping closer."

Jon slowly turned away from Satin, his ominous warning ringing loudly in the steward's ears. His footsteps crunched against the bloody ice as he staggered away after his army of dead.

"The Wall is yours now, Satin," he called back over his shoulder. His voice was the very breath of winter rattling against windowpanes in the dead of night. "Guard it well. I can only hope that circumstances do not reunite us again in this world."

With Ghost close by his side Jon slipped underneath the castle's portcullis and into the inky darkness beyond. Satin stared after him. He was able to follow Jon's movement for maybe half a dozen paces. The back of Jon's cloak was a swaying patch of darkness in a sea of darker shadows. He slowly faded out of sight. Ghost's white coat remained visible a few moments longer. But then, just like his master, he too was swallowed by the night.

As Satin stared after Jon and Ghost he felt a sudden wind pick up and begin to blow off the towering black wall of ice behind him. It howled around him, tugging at the edges of his cloak like the hands of a thousand greedy cutpurses. Underneath his fur and leather he shivered.

Although he was sure he was only imagining it, Satin couldn't help but wonder if the raspy hiss he heard in the wind wasn't really the growing howl of Others gathering somewhere on the other side of the wall, just as Jon had warned.

_Fin_

You must be asking yourself how Jon was able to retain memories and remember his mission to Winterfell while other wights who'd come before him seemed to be nothing more than mindless zombies. You might also be wondering why he seemed to have authority over the other wights.

Why is this, you ask? Answer: I really don't have one. This story was spawned from the random plot bunny of Jon being killed and coming back as a wight. I leave a lot of it up to interpretation. After all, Coldhands (who I firmly believe is really Benjen Stark) seems to be very self-aware of his situation, and even fights against other wights to lead Bran, Meera, Jojen and Hodor safely through the forest. I like to think that a select few, if they are strong-minded enough or whatnot, are able to fight their natural zombie/wight instincts and remain mostly self-aware.

Take it as you will. Hopefully you found it enjoyable.

Any thoughts, comments or questions you'd like to leave me are always accepted.

Thanks for reading!

-_LAXgirl_

Please review! I've written in a number of other smaller fandoms, but ASOIAF offically takes the prize as the worst for giving feedback. Everyone must just like to remain anonymous here, I guess.


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